Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

...in the narrative text. Middlesex is about how others see you, it is about our need to “fit in” and be normal in a society that keeps on moving those darned normalcy goalposts anyway. Why should it matter SO MUCH if Cal has female and male genitalia? Why must a man slave to make money to gain any respect within society? Why did race ever affect our communal worldview so thoroughly and how does the “alien” ever successfully integrate into a new society ...
...body thus: “Everything about Middlesex spoke of forgetting and everything about Desdemona made plain the inescapability of remembering.” So we have social realism in all its mutating glory meeting myth and legend and superstition…in all its old-Greek-lady-waiting-to-die glory. Perhaps there is a case of hope over biology, of love over genetics and sheer force of will over biodiversity. Or perhaps life is just a bit more complicated than that and ...

Kirsty1 10.03.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex is the second book by Jefferey Eugenides, whose praises I have recently been singing in my review of his other book, The Virgin Suicides. Having enjoyed his first book so much, I was instantly attracted to reading his other work, and although I was not disappointed by it, I was very surprised, as it was far from what I was expecting. Whereas The Virgin Suicides is a relatively short book in which nothing much happens and the majority of ...
...a short space of time, Middlesex is a tale of epic proportions, which traces a family’s history over a period of more than 50 years. Our narrator was born Calliope Stephanides in the early 1960s. She lived her early life as a girl, but when an accident brought her to a hospital emergency room at the age of 14, it was discovered that Calliope was in fact male, a fact which went unnoticed at the time of her birth due to her status as a pseudo-hermaphrodite ...

Pumpkin 03.03.2004 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

...by Jeffrey Eugenides. Middlesex follows three generations of the Stephanides family, from the grandparents driven out of Asia Minor Greece to the grandchildren in Modern day America, and principally Calliope, our narrator. I'm not often a fan of those novels which drag things out over so many years of a family, sometimes it seems a trite formula where gaps and holes can creep in, but not so here. Calliope sums up on the first page of the book all ...
...twice, once as a baby girl, and again as a teenage boy. This cryptic summary is like a pebble dropped into still water, and the rest of the book is the concentric rippled rings pulsing outwards, growing ever bigger as the story unfolds and gives the reader the means to piece together the truth with each new scrap of information or sudden flash back. Each revelation left me wide eyed as suddenly a new chunk of the story fell into place. I would have ...

melee679 18.10.2003 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Well, what have we here; a book all about Uxbridge? Hmm, maybe Brunel University will make an app... No, of course not. The title refers to the narrator's position as a hermaphrodite - in the middle of the sexes. If nothing else, this book explains the difference between gender and sex, which my pernickety English-student background finds comforting. The narrator - known as Calliope (later just Cal) - is Greek, and introduces his adult self before ...
...life immediately, however, we are taken back in time to her grandparents - who hold a guilty secret - escaping from the re-invading Turkish army. Broad swathes are painted through the wider context here - Greek and Turkish mutual dislike, historical reasons for their claim to the same land - with the focus placed firmly on Lefty and Desdemona's courtship and eventual escape. The individual tragedies that accompany war are emblemised in the fate of ...

jbrebel 09.12.2003 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

Really enjoyed the book but found the huge amount of historical information a bit boring, wanted the book to get on with the story about the 'main' character. Thought that the main character could have been explored a lot more. The brother was given a name that I thought put his character down and his character seemed to be so much more than that. I thought the decrptions of the house 'Middlesex' was really good and I loved the character of Desdemona. ...
...bit far fetched, especially when he turns up for the second time. This book would be excellent if you know anyone who is Greek, American or likes Greek tragedies at all. The main character isn't truelly intersexual though, and doesn't play a convincing intersexual character. It would have been more convincing if Cal was more ambigous in his sexuality in the end. But Cal seems to be a straight bloke though te whole thing, even if he looks and feels ...

beckytebbett 18.02.2005 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

I really hope that everyone at some point in their lives encounters this book. By the time I'd finished I'd learnt about genetics, hermaphrodites, Detroit, the Nation of Islam, American immigrant experience, and some history of the Greek and Turkish struggles in Asia Minor. The backdrops to the novel are diverse to say the least . But this is not a historical novel, or one that gets swallowed up in trying to show how much research the author has ...
...as well as the effects our forebears' past decisions can have on our personal present. The characters are well thought out and honestly portrayed, particularly Cal, who is the "middlesex" of the title, born with both genders. She is at first brought up a girl, but over the years diverts from the life that has been chosen for her. All the other stories and people at some point can be traced to her. After reading The Virgin Suicides, which I loved, ...

charlytune 11.12.2006 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides

This well written book tells the story of a hermaphrodite - brought up initially as a girl - but with constant doubts about her sexuality. The book traces the family history back to a tiny Greek village in Asia Minor and the subsequent clashes with the Turks, where the isolation of the villagers results in future generations paying the price for their sins. The family background is slowly revealed as the child's life story unfolds and brings us up ...

Sandroulla 14.11.2005 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: somewhat helpful
Review of Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides